


Look Inside You

by Starlithorizon



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Body Horror, Dark, Horror, M/M, Psychological Horror, Spoilers for Episode 35, Strexcorp, but seriously the way to the bright ending is not a happy one, mind-altering pharmaceuticals, spoilers for episode 32, this is a dark story with a bright ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlithorizon/pseuds/Starlithorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos and the rest of Night Vale attempt to deal with the changes wrought by StrexCorp. They are hardly for the better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look Inside You

**Author's Note:**

> When I write about Strex or Desert Bluffs, things have a tendency to get very dark. This is no exception. Proceed with caution.

The changes had been slow, at first. Little things like the napkins at Big Rico's printed with the StexCorp™ logo, or more StrexCorp™ ads playing on Cecil's radio show. This all seemed benign enough, if a little obnoxious. It made sense, in a way, for a major corporation with a new presence in a new place to make itself as well-known as possible, and if they did nothing more than place vaguely menacing advertisements about meadows on radio shows and yellow pamphlets under windshield wipers, then that wasn't much more than an inconvenience.

Then he'd noticed other differences. These were small as well, but somehow more menacing than the others. The yellow helicopters spun in lazy circles in the sky with the black and blue helicopters that had long since become permanent fixtures in the scientist's mental map of Night Vale. The helicopters painted with complex murals of birds of prey diving had disappeared completely, and he wasn't sure if that was a welcome change or not. Josie's angels had gone, which struck Carlos particularly hard. He'd grown used to their presence around town, like particularly eccentric neighbors in a town full of eccentric neighbors.

The darkest yet, though he wasn't quite sure why this seemed to be the eeriest change, were the winding lines at the pharmacy counter at the CVS or Target or wherever. Normally, there were a few people filling or picking up prescriptions like any other town, but the lines had grown exponentially longer since StrexCorp™ had shoved its way into town. Carlos took to lingering near the cough drops and Band-Aids to catch glimpses of the bottles as the pharmacists handed them across the counter to customers.

He saw more orange, triangular logos on the labels than he could stand. Every time he saw one, he wanted to reach out and snatch it from their hands to see what was in those bottles, and why the StrexCorp™ logo was printed on the labels. That would be rude at the very least, though. And, more importantly, it would draw attention his way, attention he desperately did not want.

When orange plastic bottles began dropping from the yellow helicopters, however, he saw it as both a harm and a boon. The benefit was that testing the pills would be that much easier, but the citizens' access to potentially harmful drugs was also that much easier. He didn't have the best grasp on pharmacology, but one member of his team had spent years as a pharmacist before falling in love with seismology, so together, they inspected the seemingly innocuous little white tablets falling from the sky. The bottles being thrown from helicopters weren't labeled with anything but the StrexCorp™ logo, which was as ominous a sign as any.

They tested quietly, never writing down a single note, far too afraid of what might happen if one of the corporation's lackeys discovered their work. And perhaps Carlos could barely bear the horror of what they were discovering.

He could hardly understand what the results were telling them, but Will could, and his explanations were terrifying.

"They're some kind of mix between stimulants and depressants, which is odd," Will said, grimacing at the coded notes he'd scrawled into the margins of the Bible he'd been given while paying for his groceries the previous week. "But there's some compound I can't identify. The Agent X."

That's what they'd taken to calling the mystery ingredient that left the lab rats forgetting and hallucinating things. It was more than some sort of psychedelic drug—it made the mind malleable and shaped it in strange, terrifying ways. Agent X felt very nearly like mind control. If one had asked Carlos about mind control two years ago, he would have scoffed. A year previous, he would have nervously shrugged, already acceding to the fact that the Sheriff's Secret Police could monitor thoughts, and could probably control them too. Now, the notion was like ice water trickling down his spine. This compound did terrifying things to the brain, and, _God_ , so many people were taking it!

Over the next few days, Carlos watched his fellow citizens carefully. A great deal of them were smiling in a dreamy fashion, wandering around and looking for all the world like the heroines of any Disney movie. That change made him tremendously uncomfortable.

Then, horror of horrors: Cecil's voice, drifting lazily across airwaves, began to _change_. When he spoke for StrexCorp™, it went from tense uncertainty to obviously-forced cheerfulness, and both filled Carlos with trepidation. He had never known Cecil to be anything but a weird mixture of menacing and comforting, or giddy as a high school cheerleader. Change was usually a good thing, but in this case, it could hardly be termed as a good change. It was eerie at best, but horrifying was really the most apt description.

As nervous as Carlos was about the drugs being pumped into the city, he was absolutely _terrified_ that Cecil was taking them. He could deal with the whole city spontaneously combusting and burning to the ground, but the thought of losing even the smallest part of Cecil was one the scientist could hardly face. He'd grown deeply attached to the dorky, dark, beautiful radio host, and to see him change so incrementally was awful. At night, as they lay in the hushed darkness of Cecil's bedroom, the golden glow of the streetlights falling through the slats of the blinds, Carlos let hesitant fingers play over the curves and angles of Cecil's face, feeling for something strange and frightening. He couldn't sleep until he was assured that these changes were probably nonexistent, played-up for the radio and its new owners.

God, how he hoped.

As they sat together during breakfast, perched on spindly bar stools and sneaking bites of each other's eggs, he listened closely to the cadence of Cecil's laugh. He studied the lines of his hands and arms and gestures. He devoted every ounce of himself to making sure Cecil was still Cecil.

The changes were slow, but they were very present, and they were slowly decimating Carlos and the rest of Night Vale. He could only imagine how long it would be until he was razed to ground in the company's attempt to...what? Dominate Night Vale? The world, maybe? Whatever it was, it was sinister as hell, leaching into his world and threatening to collapse it, send it ringing in his ears like an explosion.

He continued to study the drugs being pushed on the citizens, and he continued to be absolutely horrified by the results. They were no different from what he and Will had found before, but that made them no less awful.

People around the city began to change, beyond what the still-blessedly-voluntary drugs did. The medication-induced smiles began to grow tense around the corners, like they were afraid of what might happen if they fell. He imagined tiny fissures branching out from the corners of their upturned mouths, shattering the rest of the face surrounding them. Everyone became a little more erratic and unsteady. It was a frightening change, especially when coupled with the way Cecil's voice shifted across radio waves, but it was still entirely voluntary.

Then, the people in suits came. Suits and yellow ties and slicked-back hair and a look of haughty derision. They studied the peculiar town, an eyebrow arched on each face, a study in, "Oh, _really_."

Carlos didn't like the way the suits looked at him, but he kept doing his thing. He continued studying the town and the drugs and Cecil. He kept thrumming in fear and waiting for something to break.

Soon after the suits came men with smiles that were too big and eyes that were obsidian pools and sterile gloves. They flooded the town, drawing in citizens with promises of _so much happiness, come inside, please, ignore the screams, you'll be happy, just lie down please_. They all came out differently, and in increments.

Smiles stretched too wide. Eyes darkened considerably, like the pupils were broken egg yolks. After the physical changes, coupled with the drugs, came something dark and ichorous and fucking _gruesome_. People walked around with rivulets of blackening blood dripping down from the corners of their mouths and fingers.

The city was becoming a thrashing collection of _monsters_.

Cecil was still the same, likely avoiding the pills and new teas and operations like the plague. He wished he could say the same of the rest of the town. Carlos had been frightened of Night Vale when he'd first arrived, but never like this. He'd never physically cringed away from Larry Leroy or Leann Hart or anyone. But then, they'd never been covered in blood and tilted heads and chirped greetings through mouths spread too thinly across their faces.

"There's something wrong," Carlos whispered sharply into the juncture between Cecil's neck and shoulder one night, tucked in close to the radio host after waking him with a nightmare. "Have you _seen_ everyone?"

"There's nothing we can do," Cecil hissed into his hair. "Not alone, anyway."

Carlos frowned his confusion, but before he could ask, Cecil stole his words with kisses and a particularly clever roll of his hips and the questions died away. At least for a little while.

Shortly after that, the Sheriff's Secret Police began issuing notices that medication was mandatory, thrusting halfhearted citations at the few remaining citizens who'd not taken the drugs. They gathered the yellow slips in piles on their dresser like badges of honor. Slowly, the city became a strange gathering of people much too happy and much too forgetful. There was something in their eyes, more than their broken-yolk pupils. It spoke of animalistic terror, but it also spoke of something _dark_. Half the time, they didn't even look _human_ anymore. And this was a place where even someone glowing green and composed of tentacles was relatively human. Whatever happened to these people, whatever the drugs did in conjunction with the operation, it changed them, and Carlos didn't know what to do.

He'd stumbled into this town to study it, and eventually morphed into a lab-coated hero, carelessly running into danger with the intention of saving this damned place. But now, he could barely stand to leave his home. He left regularly, with the intention of picking up groceries and his weekly slices of Big Rico's pizza, but eventually, he began stocking up on basics and counting the things on the shelves that _didn't_ have StrexCorp™ logos. The numbers began to dwindle at alarming rates, and he took pains to buy things that he so desperately hoped didn't have that Agent X wound into them. It wasn't just fear of altering his analytical, scientific mind. It was the blind terror of becoming like _them_. _Them_ , with their almost Glasgow smiles, with their swirling black pupils, with their gore-streaked cheerfulness.

More than the fear of the drugs, though, there was fear of retribution. He was fastidious about hiding any work related to Agent X, or StrexCorp™ at all. As long as they saw municipally-approved things on his desk and StrexCorp™-approved products in the medicine cabinet, the Sheriff's Secret Police wouldn't tell anyone that he and Cecil weren't taking the drugs. Terrible things would happen if word got out.

He'd seen Will get attacked by some of their fellow citizens.

They'd left only his ID badge, gore streaked across their faces, and smiles that were entirely too satisfied, and entirely too _red_.

Carlos had long since learned to cope with the horrors of Night Vale. He'd learned that the death toll, while alarmingly high, was not something over which he should mourn, especially if there was nothing he could do. Moreover, Carlos learned that, sometimes, _there was nothing he could do_.

On the day he found Will's ID and a pack of altered citizens leaving the lab, he'd retched till he felt hollowed out, scooped out with a fork.

He'd cried through the night, Cecil holding him closely and murmuring comforting nonsense words and gentle sussurrus sounds to soothe him. Not very many of the words spoken into Carlos's hair really reached his brain, but a few did, and they were all a litany of, "It's not your fault."

The next day, Cecil sat in the recording booth with a voice far too chipper, talking about the destructive force of family, as sponsored by StrexCorp™. It made Carlos shudder violently, clutched in a vise-tight impulse to drive to the station just to be sure that Cecil was still Cecil. He was in no condition to drive, or to walk the hideous distance, and that is all that kept him safe in Cecil's apartment.

The changes had started out slowly, but they began to accelerate as the harsh cries of Tamika Flynn's militia cut across quiet spaces, ringing out from the Sand Wastes. Sometimes, if one listened closely, they could hear their battle cry clearly.

"We do not look around! We do not look inside! We do not sleep! Our god is not a smiling god, and we are ready for this war!"

Eventually, the lower rumbles of adult voices could be heard underlining those of the kids'. That was a slow change as well. He entertained vague thoughts of joining them, of putting his sort-of identity as the town's patron saint to good use. These were never more than just the most subtly drifting of ideas, though, always undercut with dumb terror, or being destroyed by StrexCorp™ and their eerie representatives. As horrific as the citizens were becoming, there was something even worse about the suits. Upon first glance, they seemed perfectly normal, if a little tacky with their heavy gold rings and hair gelled into submission. Closer inspection revealed something awful, though. In the right light, or from the corner of one's eye, their faces disappeared altogether, morphing into clean white bowls of space where a face should be. The fingers tapping subliminal messages in Morse code were no longer neatly manicured, but capped in long, gnarled claws. The awful Strex™ execs were the bogeymen living under Carlos's bed as a child, the monsters living in his closet when his mind was fueled with whatever horror movies his sisters had decided were a good idea earlier in the night. They were so wrong, so much worse than the altered citizens of Night Vale.

He'd seen the faceless old woman who lived in his home once, just a brief glimpse in his bathroom mirror. Her head was shaped properly, with all the right indentations which vaguely suggested a face covered by cloth or something, and her hands were thin and birdlike like his abuela's, and that shred of familiarity made him smile in the mirror before she skittered out of his view. She wasn't monstrous, despite her tendency to set things on fire and write in his books. These corporate beings, though, lending hideous credence to the term _corporate drones_ , however, were nightmare fuel. Of course, this town was fast becoming nightmare fuel, but they were the worst of the bunch.

One night, well after the curfew had been put into effect, when Carlos had been lulled into something very near to sleep by the rhythmic shouts and chants coming from the Sand Wastes, Cecil tugged sharply on his wrist. He was pulled bodily out of bed, shuffled to the closet, and dressed in something dark and warm. It took a scalding mug of coffee to wake him up properly, and when he did, he noticed that Cecil was dressed like a stereotypical cat burglar, complete with the black cap tugged securely over his head.

"Cecil, what are we doing?" he asked warily as Cecil led him through the thick, viscous shadows that were cast by the moon as its light met resistance. He noted dully that they were sulking towards the Sand Wastes. He could see an aggressively fluorescent glow coming from the area, bursting from the tall lights set up around the perimeter. It was one of the most normal things Carlos had seen in ages, and it led him to let out a huff that sounded like relief.

"You're one of the smartest people I've ever met, Carlos," Cecil said warmly, casting his slightly glowing eyes back as they continued forward. "I know you'll figure it out soon enough."

They soon reached the sand wastes, tiny rocks and bones and grains of sand crunching comfortingly under their shoes as they crested a hill. Below them, hundreds of people were moving in unison, most of them children. Across from them, perched atop another hill, stood Tamika Flynn. She was leading her troops, looking for all the world like a weary general. Cecil led Carlos into the formation, standing himself beside _Steve Carlsberg_ , of all people, easily shifting into the movements. Carlos took much longer to get it, and even when he thought he did, he still stumbled far too often.

Everyone but the children disbanded when the sun began to tint the horizon. Cecil, kind as ever, tucked Carlos into bed, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead.

"If you hear anything strange," he said softly, lips brushing skin, "please don't leave. Please. This is all I have to ask of you."

Carlos was tempted to ask questions, and perhaps get out of bed and look out the window anyway, but he mumbled a sleepy "Okay" before falling into a deep and heavy sleep.

* * *

When he woke, the room was dark and the clock on the bedside table read two in the morning. He could no longer hear the battle cries of children wafting out from the Sand Wastes, or the soft breathing of Cecil beside him. He frowned at that, and at the knowledge that he'd slept for so long. Sitting up and looking around, he saw a slant of golden light pouring across the hallway from the bathroom. Listening closely, he heard gasps and choked sobs and hisses of pain.

"Cecil?" he called quietly, getting to his feet and padding to the open door. There was a sharp inhalation.

"Don't come in here!" Cecil urged, but Carlos had already pushed open the bathroom door.

Cecil was sitting on the floor, hunched over a hand mirror and bleeding. Profusely. He looked up at Carlos, and the scientist choked out a pained gasp, dropping to his knees. Cecil, his beautiful and frightening and darling Cecil, had been mutilated and broken, with deep wounds slashed across his cheeks and even deeper scratches running to the bone across his bare torso. He was covered in streaks of blackness like tar, which Carlos instinctively knew to be someone else's blood.

"What happened?" he whispered.

Cecil blinked, and he probably would have smiled had the marks not been sliced into his skin.

" _We won_."

* * *

The changes were instantaneous, with bodies scarring and healing, with eyes reforming, with drugs leaving systems. The fires and destruction brought about by the war were all dealt with, and the bodies all buried. A funeral pyre for the executives was built in the middle of town, in the plaza in front of City Hall. The citizens healed, as did the city.

In the quiet dawn of the following day, Night Vale gathers in Mission Grove Park, leaving spaces for those who were no longer there. Hands found each other, clasped tightly, begging them to stay just a little longer. No one spoke. No one had the words for the broken masses, for the few who were left whole, for those who had been lost to the battle or its aftermath. But they didn't need words to mark the occasion. They didn't need plaques or statues or trees planted in memorial, though all of those things came later.

They just needed the delicate comfort of contact and warmth, and they found more than enough of that. Night Vale did as it always did, healing its wounds and moving on, even as the next catastrophe planned on their destruction, or as dying gods left ruin in their will. The city's greatest feat and most impressive talent was surviving. It was the most scientifically interesting place in the world, and it would outlast everything, and that is what matters.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to get a lot more happiness from my [tumblr](http://litbythestars.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
